The New York Times has a good debate this morning about the value of experience for teaching.
The debate was prompted by a very controversial article last week in which charter leaders claimed that two or three years of teaching was good enough, and that they liked the constant turnover of bright inexperienced teachers. The title of the article actually referred teachers who had a “short career by choice,” though some might say that what these young people had was a job or a temp position. A career normally refers to a commitment, not an experience.
Most extraordinary was this statement:
“Strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers,” said Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America. “The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.”
None of these young teachers will stay around long enough to be evaluated. How will we know if they are “great”?
The NY Times article focused on YES Prep charters in Houston. The assumption that the YES Prep chain of charters is exceptional. However, when you look under the hood so to speak, they don;t look so great. The have very high student attrition and lose a greater proportion of lower performing students and retain a greater proportion of higher-performing students than schools in the same geographic area. Further, 41% of their grads in Texas 4 year institutions of higher education earned less than a 2.0 GPA. Not exactly a stellar track record for a college prep charter. See: http://fullerlook.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/strong-schools-can-withstand-teacher-turnover/
I think young, inexperienced teachers can have extraordinary talent and an ability to see things in a way that can sometimes be clouded by experience. However, they need to work in an environment that not only recognizes these attributes, but also nurtures them. A place with a high turnover – for whatever reasons – may not be a nurturing environment at all.
But there needs to be a balance. If you have only young, inexperienced teachers, they have no one from whom to learn. There is no nurturing if everyone is also inexperienced.
It seems to me that the best test of a top-down educational mandate is whether or not it is used with the proponents children in their own schools. Once the private and elite schools decide that having teachers with only two years expeience is OK for them, then I’ll consider it.
As I recall, most TFA teachers teach in inner-city schools and many suburban and ruch districts will not hire them.
I too am waiting for the day that Sidwell Friends adopts a high stakes testing curriculum and fires all of its teachers, replacing them with TFA teachers. I’m not holding my breath.
Too often private school teachers, for years, have taught for short periods because they needed higher salaries for families…once they began theirs.
“The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.”
So exactly how do they do this?
If there is so much turnover, who develops the new teachers? The kid next door with one more year of experience than the new teacher? The principal who never taught, or only taught for a short time? The building itself?
Sounds like magical thinking to me.
You’re too kind, Ang: it sounds like self-interested lying to me.
I agree here. What she is saying that there is someone there who can help develop newer teachers. Could they be, perhaps, the more experienced teachers? Proof that this system rides on the back of the system already in place, and if it eliminates it, then who will train?
I know I am a far better music teacher today than I was 15 years ago because I can anticipate so much more and prepare for it—I am much better at my classroom protocol and organization, which music will work best for what age, etc.. I know the textbooks. I know the resources. I welcome new resources because I have mastered the old ones and I add new stuff to my tool box.
My experience makes me better.
I think the reformer game of doublespeak and circular reasoning should be pretty clear by now; you just have to follow the motions of the rhetorical shells.
1. According to Kopp, great teachers are produced by strong schools, not the other way around.
2. Strong schools are those with strong test scores.
3. Strong test scores are achieved by removing the weaker students as quickly as possible and teaching to the test.
So, ejecting the poor performers from the schools (i.e., send them to prison) and constant test preparation makes the school look good, which makes the teachers look good. Problems all solved (at Orwell High).
On a related note, i.e., the use of technology to change the definition of education, which is very germane to the reformers’ plans, check out Stanley Fish’s column in the 26 August New York Times.
All should read the article. From the article you reference, “Or, in other words, we’re probably measuring the wrong things and the right things are not amenable to measurement.” BINGO
“Doing the Wrong Thing Righter”
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people from trying to do the wrong thing righter.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management/administration consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan did when he wisely noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
And from one of America’s premier writers:
“The mass of men [and women] serves the state [education powers that be] thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, [administrators and teachers], etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt.”- Henry David Thoreau [1817-1862], American author and philosopher
“. . . and the right things are not amenable to measurement.”
As Noel Wilson has shown: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society
If only Noel Wilson could write like Stanley Fish.
This is so matter of fact, it is the scariest NYT article I have seen. Despite the research and the experts the reporter says, “yep..it works for me!”
First let’s look at the non-chalance of this Title. Oh hum… look at what the new trend is for millenium teachers
Second lets look at these preposterous comments by Jennifer Hines and Wendy Kopp,
“We have this highly motivated, highly driven work force who are now wondering, ‘O.K., I’ve got this, what’s the next thing?’ ” said Jennifer Hines, senior vice president of people and programs at YES Prep. “There is a certain comfort level that we have with people who are perhaps going to come into YES Prep and not stay forever.”
“Strong schools can withstand the turnover of their teachers,” said Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America. “The strongest schools develop their teachers tremendously so they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years.”
Then there is this lighthearted reporting of what they do:
“Charter leaders say they are able to sustain rapid turnover in teaching staff because they prepare young recruits and coach them as they progress. At YES Prep, new teachers go through two and a half weeks of training over the summer, learning common disciplinary methods and working with curriculum coordinators to plan lessons.”
And of course this…
“Novice teachers receive constant feedback from principals and other campus administrators. On a recent morning, Melanie Singleton, a 27-year-old principal at YES Prep Hoffman, which opened in Houston this month with five of its nine teachers in their first year on the job, circulated through classrooms.
Observing two first-year math teachers, she noticed that both were reviewing place values with sixth graders. “We might not be pushing them as rigorously as we can at this point,” she said. And when one teacher exhorted her students to give themselves a celebratory chant, Ms. Singleton corrected the teacher’s instructions. “I have to interrupt,” Ms. Singleton said. “It’s two claps and then a sizzle.”
It is all well and good that this appears on PAGE 1 of the NYT, but come on folks…Is it a certainty that a…this is the trend…I believe so.. and
b. that it be reported so non chalantly… and finally that
c. that this is acceptable…NOOOOOOO!
I had the exact same reaction, David. My heart sank as I read that article–as though education/teaching was just another “start up” that could be abandoned if it doesn’t quite work out. No mention of the impact on children to have a revolving door of inexperienced teachers every year. The article made it seem old fashioned and slightly antiquated to consider a career in education, a career built by being there every day over a period of years, improving your instruction based on the needs of your students. Nah–let’s just quit and go on to the next thing.
I’d also like to see their research that “strong schools” can withstand turn over. How much turn over? How many years? Turn over of whom (teachers? administrators? other staff?)? How does one define “strong schools”? Only by looking at standardized tests? Is that going to be the metric for everything from now on?
Just . . . sad.
Does anyone know (or care) what a “sizzle” is?
It’s what bacon does.
let’s put these much vaunted schools and their “teachers” in with the truly needy students
i.e. special needs, ESL, discipline problems etc. and see how well they do.
I had the privilege of being educated in the New York City public schools when being a teacher was valued and respected. So many of us owe our success to the corps of dedicated, experienced teachers whose commitment to teaching as a profession produced results that all of today’s testing and evaluation gimmicks will never achieve. Education is for trained and committed professionals. I am proud to say that my daughter is a teacher.
Maybe it’s my constant need to take the opposite side of any point, or maybe I’m just in a good mood today. My children attend public school in NYC. My wife and I know, value, and respect their teachers, and it’s my impression that the other parents in their classes do, too. And for all the problems I have with the city’s public school system, I don’t they’re getting a worse education than they would have gotten in NYC 20 or 30 years ago. I have plenty of fears but I have very high hopes. Must just be a good mood.
FLERP–I don’t understand. You are feeling optimistic despite what?
Despite the view that public education is worse than it used to be, or that teachers aren’t “valued and respected” anymore, or that public education today is all about “testing and evaluation gimmicks.” Also despite my own general sense of terror when I contemplate the next 30-40 years, and what kind of world I will have brought my children into. Well, so much for the good mood.
I didn’t mean to spoil your mood–and I always appreciate your fair look at things. I was just wondering if a complacency was coming on; or an acquiesence to a more corporate controlled public education system (?). I have your same sense of positivity in my work (I have to, afterall. . .I’m here to serve the children whether we are beholden to RttT or not). However, I have a little more skepticism when it comes to where I will put my son in a few years (public or private).
I have a great unease about Common Core; it’s philosophical, for me. Adjusting to new things is always hard, and that is what those who are in favor of CCSS want to encourage. . .that there is simply an adjustment period. But it seems deeper than that to me. . .and I am still not so sure about a corporate culture in public school (was it you yesterday who put that very apt and very entertaining comment about what the principal should do to validate VAM?) So I try to always be in a good mood about public school too—but I continue to read this blog and other blogs to learn. I didn’t understand your comment because I couldn’t tell if you were saying “I’ve decided I am OK with the corporate reform movement” or if you were saying “there is not as much need for reform as reformers want us to believe there is.”
So, no matter your mood, which is it? (just curious—again, because I respect your comments a great deal).
In practice, according to so-called reformers, and in particular the execrable Wendy Kopp, “great” educators are by definition white, upper class, paternalistic and arrogant.
Oh, and most importantly, temporary.
Mike, Did you go to Fordham University?
Just like King!
Sent from my iPhone
Experience matters. There can be no question about it. Not every experienced teacher is a great teacher, but very, very few inexperienced teachers are great teachers. One factor I have not heard enough about is commitment. Professionals who take the time and effort to be trained as teachers view teaching as a career and look to stay in the profession over the long haul. These people are not only committed to teaching, but committed to the children they teach and to the community in which they teach. I explore the issue of certification and commitment to teaching in this post where I dream of Wendy Kopp encountering a member of “Practice Medicine for America.” http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2013/08/wendy-kopp-goes-to-doctor-or-does.html
Having had the opportunity to work with a small (about a dozen) sample of TFA mathematics teachers in grades 6-12 in the South Bronx and Detroit, I strongly suspect that “great” first-year teachers aren’t emerging from 5 weeks of TFA training. What is emerging is a group of reasonably bright college graduates, most of whom aren’t mathematics majors, thrust into classrooms that would test the experience, wisdom, professionalism, and patience of veteran instructors, with the predictable traumas for both these spring lambs and their charges.
No one knows for sure how to adequately prepare education students to be fully-effective teachers the first year on the job, even in ideal settings. Countries that aren’t basing their teacher training and development on pipe dreams and propaganda (e.g., Japan), know that young teachers need many things before they set foot in a classroom (not 5 weeks worth of things), but even more on a regular basis once they’re on the job. And so they structure things so that fresh-out-of-college teachers are closely mentored, and not just during the first year of their careers.
Of course, Japan also structures the teaching day so that teachers do less in-class work and have time for reflection and collegial interaction. And most importantly, Japan isn’t paying lip-service to great teaching: they’re doing the hard, costly work that produces it, unlike the self-serving snake-oil salesmen from TFA.
Mike. Over 4 years I mentored 19 TFA corps members through the Fordham University Masters in Ed program. Of those, (2008-2012) at last count only 4 still remained as classroom teachers.
Of those 19 there were 6 (2 of whom went to med school) that became good, decent teachers after 2 years with the potential to be great after 5…
None of them were good after their 5 weeks. It took time for them to trust what I taught them about teaching and it apply thoe skills to teh talents they brought with them.
“Mr. Dowdy, the 24-year-old teacher who is already thinking beyond the classroom, wants something more, however. “I feel like our generation is always moving onto the next thing,” he said, “and always moving onto something bigger and better.” ”
I wonder how he will feel when he is older? This attitude should be a great motivator, but it could also contribute to a frustrating life.
While I understand wanting to grow as a person and professional. something seems off about this attitude. In many cases, it takes an individual a few years to be a strong contributor in their profession.
““I feel like our generation is always moving onto the next thing,” he said, “and always moving onto something bigger and better.””
Good, because his generation has been on my nerves for too long already. The career-minded 24-year-old is a wonder to behold, though. Enthralled with his own momentum, unaffected by the universe’s indifference to how he feels about his generation.
“The career-minded 24-year-old is a wonder to behold, though. Enthralled with his own momentum, unaffected by the universe’s indifference to how he feels about his generation.”
Ha ha! Thanks for reminding me why I don’t miss my twenties.
He is saying that the job of a lowly classroom teacher is not good enough for him – he wants something bigger and better.
No two people are the same. But over my life, I’ve found that I learn things very slowly, through practice and repetition. Preparation is extremely important. But I learn nothing until I’ve actually done the thing I’ve thought prepared for, then thought about what I’ve done, and then repeated that process over and over. At the end of that process, I know how to do a couple things. I assume that many teachers learn and improve in similar ways.
yes!
In fact, we perfect our presentations of lessons as we go. Not that we can’t grow and change, but the more we have done it, the better we can anticipate questions, gliches, trouble spots, kinks, and simply classroom flow (for me, as a music teacher, this is huge. The first day I introduce new lessons is the day I work out the hiccups. . .and by the last day of the cycle I have it down).
Understanding group dynamics takes time and practice, and much of teaching is about understanding group dynamics. I remember a young observing teacher once commenting that every third grade class I taught tended to respond to lessons in the same general way. Could this be a sign of patterns in human development? Ones that we can study? Ones that are emphasized in teacher preparation?
Perhaps the real answer is that teacher prep should be graduate level only. ?? Rather than presenting a model with less training, maybe there needs to be a model with more? Like no more undergraduate education degrees; only graduate level ones. ??
Sounds like a pretty good description of the learning process. I would guess that when you say you know how to do something, you do unlike that 24 year old who thinks he has “been there and done that” after two years(?) of teaching.
I’m not a teacher, so the comparison wouldn’t make sense in my case. But I think I can imagine how the 24-year-old’s thinking.
When I look back and consider myself at that age, I see how undeveloped I was and how much I’ve grown and changed (ow my back). I couldn’t see those things with any precision at the time. I couldn’t grasp what was the practical difference between 2 years and 5 years, or 2 years and 10 years, or 2 years and 20 years.
On the other hand, 2 years is a meaningful chunk of time for a 24-year-old, and they can improve dramatically at any job in that period, given that they start from such a low base of skill and experience. I think this is especially true of any job that involves “performance.” For most people, there’s something very difficult about commanding a room and being articulate in real time. It can be literally terrifying at first, but it gets easier through repetition. At some point, once you’ve done it enough times, you realize you’re no longer concerned about “getting through the next 6 or 7 hours.” And that’s the the point where you can *start* to learn how to do this properly. I’m thinking specifically of things like cross-examining a witness at trial, or formulating good questions in an important deposition, or doing oral argument before an appellate court with a “hot bench.” But I can imagine that teaching is similar.
My point being that I think I understand why a 24-year-old who’s taught for two years thinks he’s become an excellent teacher. What he’s really become is a teacher who can start the day without the fear that he won’t make it through the next 6 or 7 hours.
I could be wrong. My teaching experience is very limited. None was at K-12. I was atrocious.
I knew you were not a teacher. Learning is learning no matter where you do it. You are right about that automaticity that comes with experience doing a particular task. After a certain amount of practice, it is not longer necessary to think about each step. You move on to the next level. Depending on your skills and the task or job that needs to be done the learning curve changes. I only regret that he thinks the “bigger and better” does not come from more years of teaching (and learning).
I was akin to a TFA recruit in my experience teaching when I began teaching. I knew I was sadly lacking and a few years in the classroom didn’t make me that much better although I will grant you that I was a great deal more comfortable. I do remember some really stupid things that came out of my mouth at that age although it took years before I realized it. I suppose that is one reason I am glad nobody will ever care what I say. I don’t need anyone digging around to find out what foolishness I spouted when I was young and “half baked.” Then again, the wisdom I have gained has frequently come from my students, and my younger colleagues certainly have been a source of inspiration over the years.
Reminds me of a time when I was in an emergency room for a number of hours. It seemed like someone new came into my “room” fairly often, and every time I would have to explain once again why I was there and what had happened.
I thought teachers were in the classrooms to teach the students, not teach the new teachers every year.
Reformers like Kopp and Gates should enroll their own children in charter schools with 27 year old principals who are more focused on gimmicks than instructional practices.
THat’s a bunch of crap. Do you want a doctor or lawyer who only has two years of experience over a seasoned professional? A seasoned professional who wants the job for the long term and trains in it to become better. That”s the person I want to handle me. Teaching is a profession, not a summer job or internship. To become better you need the commitment and training Our poor students deserve this type of teacher just like the 1per centers children.
Reposted form another article and in response to Wendy Kopp-out:
The tone of my following comment does not intend to be mean and juvenile, but it may come off as such, so I apologize in advance:
If Wendy Kopp were to have a blocked artery in one of her chambers and had a massive heart attack or if she was diagnosed with a serious growth protruding somewhere on her torso or in one of her vital organs, I wonder if she’d rush to see a specialist who had less than a year training in the medical field and was planning on leaving in 3 years.
I wonder if Ms. Kopp would undergo surgery and seek to find that one year-long trained surgeon who worked for a “very strong hospital” and was bound to become a “great surgeon” in his first year. After all, can’t very strong hospitals withstand the turnover of their doctors?
I wonder if she’d opt for chemotherapy from some twenty-something year old who took a few chemistry courses and did well in them and was now in charge of her therapy. I’m not saying that I would want to see that happen, but it seems like something SHE would love to see happen. It is, as she has expressed, the way she thinks. It appears to be her value system.
Imagine the professional world according to Wendy Kopp . . . .
I did a piece on credentialing. Our future is is turning into this:
Wendy Kopp is superior at promoting Wendy Kopp and nothing more.
I’d like to see a Kopp arrest Wendy . . . . and imprison her for life, where she will insist that the corrections officers need just 5 weeks of training, regardless of their backgrounds. . . . The strongest prisons can withstand security guard instability.
Agree
There is no doubt that Title I schools need experienced teachers. Novices with good intentions and five weeks training may learn crowd control techniques, but learning about children, how they learn, and understanding what their lives are like is the work of seasoned professionals.
The test of how prima facie idiotic Kopp’s statement is this: would you feel the same way about the surgeon who was going to repair your heart? Lets face it: the TFA teachers are unwitting scabs for a system that does not value trained professionals and refuses to pay them what they are worth, or treat them with dignity and respect.
That’s right, Robert. I mused about Wendy meeting up with a Doctor for America in this post. http://russonreading.blogspot.com/2013/08/wendy-kopp-goes-to-doctor-or-does.html
Uh . . . are we saying that teaching reading and arithmetic is as difficult as cardiac surgery? Not that the TFAers aren’t scabs. They are. But we do need to not hyperbolize our comparisons.
Uh, yes, teaching is every bit as complicated as cardiac surgery, and if you don’t believe it, I invite you to spend a year teaching and see what you think. To be a great teacher, you need a certain set of skills that cannot be mastered in a few weeks of training. I would expect the same could be said of a great cardiac surgeon.